As an alternative to downloading the entire source tree in a single file, there are several files that need to be fetched from the download location (directory /pub/x.org/pub/X11R6.8.2/src/):

The first package contains the Xorg libraries and support programs, the second contains standard X programs, the third contains the X server, the fourth and fifth are fonts, the sixth is normal documentation, and the seventh is hardcopy documentation.

To check your file for integrity, download the md5sums file. Then:

md5sum -c md5sums

The package (or all seven packages) should give an OK status.

If you have an Intel P6 (Pentium Pro, Pentium II and later), it is recommended that you compile MTRR (Memory Type Range Registers) support into the kernel. The kernel can map Cyrix and AMD CPUs to the MTRR interface, so selecting this option is useful for those processors also. This option is found in the "Processor type and features" menu. It can increase performance of image write operations 2.5 times or more on PCI or AGP video cards.

In the "Character Devices" section, enable AGP Support and select the chipset support on your motherboard. If you do not know the chipset, you may select all the chip types at the expense of extra kernel size. You can usually determine your motherboard's chipset by running the command lspci, a program from the PCI Utilities-2.1.11 package.

In the "Character Devices" section, disable Direct Rendering Manager unless you have a Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) supported video card. A complete list of DRI supported video cards can be found at http://dri.sourceforge.net in the "Status" section. Currently, supported cards include those from 3dfx (Voodoo, Banshee), 3Dlabs, ATI (Rage Pro, Rage 128, Radeon 7X00, Radeon 2), Intel (i810, i815), and Matrox (G200, G400, G450).

Additionally NVidia provides their own closed source binary drivers, which do not make use of DRI. If you intend to use these drivers, do not enable DRI.

If you made any changes to the kernel configuration, recompile and install the new kernel.

Note

If you build Xorg in a chroot environment, make sure the kernel version of the base system and the target system are the same.

Xorg insists on putting its boot and profile scripts into the /etc directory even if specifically told not to compile anything Xprint server or client related (see host.def below). The following command will suppress any such modifications:

sed -i '/^SUBDIRS =/s/ etc$//' programs/Xserver/Xprint/Imakefile

When building Xorg, you should create a shadow directory of symbolic links for the compiled code. To do that, first make lndir. Starting from the xc directory:

pushd config/util &&
make -f Makefile.ini lndir

Now, as the root user:

cp lndir /usr/bin/

And back as a regular user:

popd

Now create the shadow tree:

mkdir ../xcbuild &&
cd ../xcbuild &&
lndir ../xc

The next step is to create the config/cf/host.def file. The documentation for Xorg indicates that the application will build without a host.def file, but the included libraries for Fontconfig and FreeType2 do not build properly on a base LFS system. Therefore, you must specify that these libraries, as well as others, should be imported from the system.

Note

config/cf/host.def is a C file, not a shell script. Ensure the comments delimited by /* ... */ are balanced when modifying the file.

cat > config/cf/host.def << "EOF"
/* Begin Xorg host.def file */
 
/* System Related Information.  If you read and configure only one
 * section then it should be this one.  The Intel architecture defaults 
 * are set for a i686 and higher.  Axp is for the Alpha architecture 
 * and Ppc is for the Power PC.  AMD64 is for the Opteron processor. 
 * Note that there have been reports that the Ppc optimization line 
 * causes segmentation faults during build.  If that happens, try 
 * building without the DefaultGcc2PpcOpt line.  ***********/
 
/* #define DefaultGcc2i386Opt -O2 -fno-strength-reduce \
                              -fno-strict-aliasing -march=i686 */
/* #define DefaultGccAMD64Opt -O2 -fno-strength-reduce \
                              -fno-strict-aliasing */
/* #define DefaultGcc2AxpOpt  -O2 -mcpu=ev6 */
/* #define DefaultGcc2PpcOpt  -O2 -mcpu=750 */

#define HasFreetype2            YES
#define HasFontconfig           YES
#define HasExpat                YES
#define HasLibpng               YES
#define HasZlib                 YES

/*
 * Which drivers to build.  When building a static server, each of 
 * these will be included in it.  When building the loadable server 
 * each of these modules will be built.
 *
#define XF86CardDrivers         mga glint nv tga s3virge sis rendition \
                                neomagic i740 tdfx savage \
                                cirrus vmware tseng trident chips apm \
                                GlideDriver fbdev i128 \
                                ati AgpGartDrivers DevelDrivers ark \
                                cyrix siliconmotion vesa vga \
                                XF86OSCardDrivers XF86ExtraCardDrivers
*/

/*
 * Select the XInput devices you want by uncommenting this.
 *
#define XInputDrivers           mouse keyboard acecad calcomp citron \
                                digitaledge dmc dynapro elographics \
                                microtouch mutouch penmount spaceorb \
                                summa wacom void magictouch aiptek
 */

/* Most installs will only need this */

#define XInputDrivers           mouse keyboard

/* Disable building Xprint server and clients until we get them figured
 * out but build Xprint libraries to allow precompiled binaries such as
 * Acrobat Reader to run.
 */

#define XprtServer              NO
#define BuildXprintClients      NO

/* End Xorg host.def file */
EOF

There are several other options that you may want to consider. A well documented example file is config/cf/xorgsite.def.

Install Xorg by running the following commands:

sed -i -e "s@^#include <linux/config.h>@/* & */@" \
    `grep -lr linux/config.h *` &&
( make World 2>&1 | tee xorg-compile.log && exit $PIPESTATUS )

Again as the root user:

make install && 
make install.man &&
ln -sf ../X11R6/bin /usr/bin/X11 &&
ln -sf ../X11R6/lib/X11 /usr/lib/X11 &&
ln -sf ../X11R6/include/X11 /usr/include/X11